Tennis Update

Gael Monfils will make his debut at this year’s World Tour Finals in London, which commences on the 13th November, after third seed Dominic Thiem lost his second round match at Vienna yesterday. Monfils joins Djokovic, Murray, Wawrinka, Raonic and Nishikori in the elite field and Thiem still has the chance to qualify as a debutant as he currently resides in eighth place in the ATP race.

This week’s ATP action at Basel and Vienna is now down to quarter-final stage and we witnessed more shocks and upsets at both tournaments yesterday. At Basel fifth seed Goffin lost against Wild Card Del Potro (advised 6/1) while eighth seed Sock (advised 16/1) crashed out against the unseeded Granollers-Pujol 6-3 6-1. Del Potro plays third seed Nishikori for a place in the semi-finals today and he leads the head-to-head 4-0, which means he should progress if previous form is an accurate indicator.

Top seed Wawrinka (advised 3/1) had to work hard again yesterday for his victory scraping past qualifier Young 7-6 6-7 6-4 and so far he has not justified being the tournament top seed and favourite. Fourth seed Cilic progressed to the quarter-final stage in comfortable fashion yesterday defeating Carreno-Busta in straight sets and, if he defeats Granollers-Pujol today and Wawrinka gets past veteran Mischa Zverev, I would prefer to be on Cilic based on both players form this week, even though Wawrinka leads the head-to-head 10-2.

At Vienna top-seed Andy Murray is still on track to win a third ATP title in a row after lifting the trophies at Beijing and Shanghai. He had to work hard to reach the quarter-final stage taking three sets to beat Klizan and Simon and faces another tricky opponent in John Isner today. However, he should progress as he leads the head-to-head 6-0. Defending champion fifth seed David Ferrer is surprisingly still in with a shout of defending his title and faces the unseeded Troicki today and leads the head-to-head 3-1.

Sixth seed Tsonga has impressed so far this week and looks like the favourite to reach the final from the bottom half of the draw.  He faces the unseeded Ramos-Vinolas today and leads the head-to-head 4-0, so should progress to Saturday’s semi-finals. Eighth seed Karlovic faces Wild Card Kachanov today and the veteran Croatian will have his work cut out as the young Russian has impressed this week and is looking more and more like a potential future big star of the game.

From a match betting and trading perspective the game between Murray and Isner has the potential to be very close if their matches this week and previous three set ATP tour encounters are anything to go by. All four games landed the Over Games line and backing Over 22.5 Games at 11/10 today should return a profit. All four previous encounters between Troicki and Ferrer were won in straight sets and would have landed the Under Games line, so it’s worth-while following this trend again today.

It’s also worth opposing Karlovic (1.6) against Kachanov (2.5) today as the young Russian has dispatched both of his more experienced opponents in one-sided fashion this week and he has the game to make life very difficult for Karlovic.